New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?

In New Albany this political season, we've had two previews apart from debate coverage, one for council and the other for mayor. That's all.

Yes, it's true: New Albany's N and T reporter left his job just as the election season was approaching full boil. However, since the 2011 merger and the main office moving to Jeffersonville, it's a discussion about disparity that we've had more than once.

The newspaper will issue its standard denials, and so it goes. In a broader sense, the News and Tribune faces a future challenge shared by all traditional news outlets in the area, which need to come to grips with the fact that we started voting two weeks ago. Print and television media released their election previews and information packages just this week. Probably 30% of voters, maybe more, already had voted by the time these appeared.

as for Jeffersonville/Clark County versus New Albany/Floyd, it's out of kilter, and speaking personally, I doubt it ever changes so long as the office is located in Jeffersonville. As usual, I hope I'm wrong.

There's nothing in the record here suggesting that Team Gahan had anything to do with this cabinet company moving to the outskirts of New Albany nor did the business owners mention parks or pools - what Gahan calls "economic development" - as reasoning in support of their decision. The paper, though, runs the release alongside a photo Gahan has been using for campaign purposes, making an association where there is none just before the election. If the paper isn't going to question the mayor - something they have an abysmal record of not doing - perhaps they could at least question themselves a little.

A PAC called Hoosiers for Jeffersonville donated a total of $100,000 to Moore's political committee, named I'm For Mike Moore, this year. The transfer leaves just $593 in the PAC's account.

Contributors to Hoosiers for Jeffersonville are almost exclusively engineers and architects, more than half employed by companies — or companies themselves — that have been contracted by the city under Moore's administration.

Of course, the first advantage enjoyed by voters in Jeffersonville is that neither of their mayoral candidates decided to game the debate process by opting out, as Jeff Gahan did in New Albany -- or participating in a debate organized by one of their own appointees, in one of their own showpiece buildings, with questions provided in advance.

As Edgar Winter once urged, "Come on and take a free ride."

The second plus is linked here. For New Albanians reading the newspaper, it's epochal, breathtaking and offensive, all at once: A reporter uses a phrase like "here are the facts," and it applies to something important, like an election,

Come to think of it, we did experience pre-election investigative reporting in October, 2014.

JEFFERSONVILLE — Throughout all three debates this election season, Jeffersonville mayoral candidates Mike Moore and Dennis Julius challenged the accuracy of some of each others' statements, asking audience members to look it up for themselves.

There's a story just like this one waiting to be written, right here in New Albany. City Hall's conventional media touts, social media feeds, billboards ... the vast majority of these featuring the face of the incumbent mayor in an election year.

I've written about Jeff Gahan's bizarre cult of personality.But perhaps more importantly, who's paying -- candidate Gahan or the taxpayers?

The newsletter, called Progress, is an eight-page glossy publication with articles and accompanying photographs detailing recent projects that the redevelopment commission has championed — and some that it's had minimal involvement in. One article contains two factual inaccuracies.

"I am not running for public office, nor trying to keep a job," Chalfant wrote in an email to the News and Tribune. "I am a lifelong Republican who is upset that my name is attached to a false political ad without my knowledge or consent, and that redevelopment commission dollars are being used to fund political ads."

Following is the newspaper's overview. Let's focus on just one race, in the 2nd district, where the people living in those neighborhoods have a "choice" between Winkin and Blinkin -- and might as well Nod off.

If you can determine what either of these cossetted old white men are talking about, please let us know.

... (Irv Stumler) added he is against switching every one-way street in the downtown area to two-way traffic, as suggested by the Jeff Speck study. He said it is something that should gradually be initiated.

"You have speed limits, just enforce those," Stumler said. "It would cost a lot of money to switch streets to two-way. Maybe if you start out with a few side streets, take it one step at a time."

(Bob) Caesar said he is also against a massive switch.

"As far as flipping every street, absolutely not. I am 100 percent against that," Caesar said. "But I am for making the street grid better and easier to navigate. I am all for that."

Jerod Clapp previews the mayoraLet's pull just one classic example of King Gahan the Oblivious.

“All of the decisions that are made through board of works, city council… public meetings take place to address various aspects of whatever the action is. As far as I’m concerned, it’s very transparent. I really don’t agree with anyone that’s making those kinds of statements that we’re not transparent. I’d just like them to be specific. We haven’t changed meeting times, those schedules have been around for many years.”

NEW ALBANY — Making the city a better place to work and live are on the agendas of each candidate shooting for the mayor’s office in New Albany, but they each have a different approach to reaching those goals.

Incumbent and Democrat, Jeff Gahan, 52, city councilman and Republican Kevin Zurschmiede, 53, and local businessman and independent, Roger Baylor, 55, all want to improve the city for potential and current residents while growing the prospects for businesses that are already here or eyeing the region.

Infrastructure, code enforcement and other issues — two-way streets included — have all been key talking points for the candidates, but the emphasis and level of priority all have different places for the candidates.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

That's right, it's the WNAS "Meet the Candidate" video -- you know, the one that Warren & the Jeffettes sought to ban, but now you can see it for yourself, make up your own mind, and count the ways to an alternative in the 2015 mayor's race. Yes, it's 18 minutes long. I can't help it if there are things to say more important than the usual biographical twaddle. I think you'll agree that there's more content here than has been witnessed emanating from either major political party candidate. Watch it and please share on social media. Thanks.

... In order to give broader coverage to their plaint, I’m republishing the text of a newspaper advertisement placed this week by the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 99. And yes, I’m doing so because I believe the safety and well-being of this city depend on Jeff Gahan being retired from public office. Indeed, I am continually amused that so many feign outrage that a blog, a Facebook post, or a Tweet might contain an actual wish that the writer’s preferred candidate be elected and that the incumbent be retired. City employees and appointees and the mayor’s family members seem to think that electoral politics requires silence about the issues and deference to their chosen one.

A year and a half ago, we took a look at some New Albany mayoral election tallies dating back to 1971, with accompanying analysis. I doubt Nate Silver is quivering in his boots, but feel free to click through and reread. The raw numbers are reprinted below.

ON THE AVENUES: A year later, the backroom politics of pure spite at Haughey’s Tavern still reek.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

In September of 2014, the city of New Albany demolished the historic Haughey’s Tavern building at 922 Culbertson Avenue. There'll be more explanatory links at the conclusion, but for now, here's an overview from the archives.

The vacant space subsequently was folded into pre-existing and thoroughly secretive plans for erecting six New Directions houses, which have since been completed, and form one of Jeff Gahan’s re-election platform planks – this being a prime reason the potted events occurred in the first place.

Four of the new houses are in a row across Culbertson from the ghost of Haughey’s, and two occupy the tavern’s decimated footprint.

Let’s try not to forget the central point, one consistently obscured by Team Gahan’s relentless, PAC-financed and self-serving propaganda machine: Haughey’s Tavern might have been saved and rehabilitated into the sort of street corner anchor that these two new houses are utterly incapable of being, now or ever.

After all, Haughey’s did it for more than 125 years, with various occupants surviving floods, tornadoes, ice storms and changing times ... until Gahan's suburban-over-urban logic came along.

There are numerous vacant spaces nearby where houses might yet be built, and in fact, since this disgraceful act unfolded behind closed door last year, the city has yet to present a coherent plan for affordable infill housing – at 922 Culbertson, or anywhere else.

This shameful absence only continues to be accentuated by the shameless non-public process prefacing the unnecessary Haughey’s demolition.

Just as there is much to be learned by any human society’s treatment of its most challenged members, we can derive insight as to the behavioral patterns of the Gahan administration in recalling this story, which is not for the faint of heart.

The narrative that follows is based on several composite sources. Some people directly involved spoke to me about the experience, but given the mayor’s vengeful tendencies, they would not do so for attribution. If anyone mentioned herein objects to my characterization, I'll retract it, though I think it's accurate. Maybe some day we'll have investigative journalism hereabouts.

Conversely, when I filed a formal “freedom of information” request with municipal "corporate attorney" Shane Gibson for e-mails, these were promptly provided … and not a single one of them involved the mayor.

That’s right. Not even one.

Do you believe Jeff Gahan did not send a single e-mail pertaining to this issue during the time period requested?

My guess is that he did, but did not use his official city e-mail account, and instead wrote for attribution via a private e-mail address – one at a server lying conveniently outside the realm of public record requests like the one I made.

If you believe that Gahan did not utter a single electronic communication about the Haughey’s debacle, then I have an Ohio River Bridge for purchase.

On layaway.

---

During the run-up to the demolition, the city of New Albany never openly listed the Haughey’s building in any coherent manner that might have enticed developers to inquire. It was not marketed, and there was no effort to arrive at independent verification of the building’s structural condition.

Nevertheless, local developer Steve Resch examined the building and made an offer. He never believed the “dilapidated” party line espoused by City Hall’s minions (David Brewer and David Duggins prominent among them), and thought the building was salvageable.

Resch apparently thought he had a deal, to include the city and Indiana Landmarks combining resources with him in an amount previously discussed even before his offer was made, as intended to make possible a complete stabilization and exterior repair.

After that, Resch would wait for a tenant, and then finish the interior to spec on his own dime. His estimate of the total cost of rehabilitation was one-half to one-third less than that suggested by the minions – who never once explained their numbers publicly.

No sooner than Resch thought it was done deal, the rug was pulled out from beneath him. The only transparent, clear and publicly apparent instigator at the time was 1st district councilman Dan Coffey – in whose district the address is NOT located – who subbed for the AWOL 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps and constantly insisted to all and sundry that the building must come down.

Why?

Two sources told me that with county elections coming in November, 2014, and with Coffey mounting an ill-fated campaign for commissioner, he’d concocted a campaign financing deal with CCE/Eastridge, a deal that depended on the Haughey’s Tavern demolition to funnel the appropriate percentage toward Coffey’s campaign.

Coffey didn’t even get 40% of the vote – and a building that cannot be replaced subsequently disappeared.

It’s worth noting that during Doug England’s final term, CCE/Eastridge constantly was on the hot seat, prompting numerous neighborhood complaints about its toxic (literally) operations where Silver Street Park eventually was built with TIF bonds after the city bought the property for a princely sum.

Yes, from CCE/Eastridge.

Nowadays CCE/Eastridge is the beneficiary of prime governmental largess, including numerous demolition contracts, many of which emanate from The Redevelopment Commission, upon which both Coffey and Adam Dickey (the Democratic Party chairman and a vocal proponent of serial historic property demolition) are seated.

One probable reason for CCE/Eastridge’s newfound preferential treatment has less to do with Coffey and more to its ownership of ground by the river needed by the city to complete the 8th-through-18th stretch of the Ohio River Greenway.

That’s right: A project that goes straight through the Redevelopment Commission.

---

At some point during the spring or early summer of 2014, local Landmarks head Greg Sekula spotted the down-low demolition order, and called Gahan seeking an intervention.

Evidently Gahan initially indicated he was receptive, then began badgering Sekula into asking instead for a Horseshoe Foundation grant. This Sekula did, but when the Horseshoe meeting took place, Gahan sat impassively, refusing to motion, afterward remarking to Sekula that it didn’t matter.

According to Gahan, the board he so regularly maligns wouldn’t consider it, anyway, so why bother? We can surmise that the deal already was done at this point, but Ceausescu -- oops, Gahan -- wasn’t finished yet.

Following the Horseshoe fiasco, Gahan complained about Sekula to the head office of Landmarks, and in essence, tried to get him disciplined or fired. This did not occur, primarily because Sekula had done nothing untoward apart from trying to do his job, as opposed to appeasing Gahan's ego.

These phone calls jibe with stories told by other informants, who point to Gahan’s fundamental and recurring vindictiveness, and his zeal in this instance to show preservationists like Sekula exactly who’s the boss in this town.

Previously I sent e-mails to New Directions asking when the infill plan we see now was originally minted. The chronology matters, but New Directions never answered these e-mails.

At the time, there were regular rumors to the effect that Habitat for Humanity had a deal in place prior to the Haughey’s demolition, which Habitat dismissed – but the rumors themselves suggest the existence of some sort of pre-arranged outcome, even as the other subplots dropped into place.

No sooner than Haughey's came down than Gahan announced the partnership with New Directions to construct his platform planks.

From top to bottom, the fate of Haughey’s smells of an arrogant absence of due process, even a year later. The suburban niceness of the houses standing there now jars with ironic dissonance as one learns how they came into being, because ends do not justify means, and transparent processes really do matter.

Unfortunately, an arrogant usurpation of due process is the way Gahan rolls. For more, read this five-part series from August of 2014.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Okay, okay ... so I do know her. Kate Caufield's hubby Greg earlier penned an endorsement of his own at Fb. Thanks to the both of you, and readers -- please navigate to the News and Tribune site to read the whole letter.

Somewhere, in an alternate universe, there is a younger version of me with a shiver running down her spine. Never did she conceive that she would one day venture to write a letter in support of a political candidate.

It's been a cynical gamble. If Gahan genuinely understands that traffic speeds are excessive, and in densely populated urban areas, that speed surely kills, then every moment of delay in implementing a solution comes with the risk of death and injury.

Concurrently, if he grasps the empirical record of success in other locales of assisting local independent business growth through street grid reform, he's actively abetting daily infrastructure conditions that work against economic development.

The following was published on December 14, 2014. Almost a year has passed.

What has been the opportunity cost of Jeff Gahan's cowardice?

---

Oh where oh where, can our Speck study be?(There’s no hope if Duggins is the addressee)Speck’s gone to Portsmouth, so we’ve got to be goodSo we can see the study before we’re dead

Let's go all the way back, a full 200+ entirely wasted, squandered and lost civic days ago – not to mention the 730 ones ticking past before these – to April 18, 2014, and what should be required reading for owners and employees of each and every independent small business located in downtown New Albany.

Grace Schneider’s article in the Courier-Journal on that day was about Jeff Speck's then-ongoing (and since forever-impending) streets study.

The streets study was supposed to have been finished in September, but now it's almost Christmas, and if the city of New Albany actually possesses a copy of the study, not one of its supposed "proponents" at City Hall is saying a single word about it. “Coy” hardly does the silence justice. “Gag order” comes closer.

I’m holding out for “sheer primal terror.”

In fact, when the topic of Speck’s streets study is publicly raised, the muzzles come out faster than Wyatt Earp’s six-shooter, with those who claim that Speck’s recommendations are their first priority are transformed into inward and outward censors, seeking only to suppress discussion of what they purport to support.

Luckily, a Third Floor insider explained it to me last week in plainer English:

Two way streets? You won't get them from Jeff Gahan. He doesn’t think there’s a problem, and if there is, he thinks it will just go away and solve itself. He’s scared to death – and he’s getting most of his information from Duggins. All the trust is gone.

Strong words … but so far, amply buttressed by observable reality and the administration’s own bizarrely frank admissions. For the benefit of those readers who own and operate businesses downtown, only one brief pull from Schneider’s article is necessary.

(Speck) said he expects to recommend removing all one-way streets and converting them to two-way because "the data shows very clearly (one-way streets) hurt businesses."

Granted (and ranted), we’ve known since the Reagan administration that mayoral teams in New Albany simply do not have economic development plans for downtown, although it is striking that in the past, “lifer” luminaries like the since-deposed Carl Malysz would at least offer periodically creative lies to the contrary: “That’s DNA’s job,” or “Mainland Properties should do the trick for a mere $15 million.”

In today’s Down Low New Albany, various functionaries can do little better than make limp excuses, assuming they can be roused to so much as even try. In fact, they seldom do.

The polar Inuit have fewer words to describe "snow" than Mr. Duggins possesses excuses as to why a downtown economic development plan isn’t only implausible on his watch, but impossible.

But please, read Schneider’s paragraph again.

If one-way streets hurt businesses, then removing them helps businesses.

And, by readily logical extension, if helping businesses is a function of economic development – and this seems both reasonable and widely accepted – then simply removing one-way streets and retrofitting them into two-way streets is a function of economic development.

Are you still with me, Mr. Duggins? I know, I know ... books, reading and all that shit.

Two-way streets are economic development tools of the precise sort this administration persistently denies it can manage to conceive.

Two-way streets stand to lift all boats, pro-actively, without the need for selective interpretation and random political awards.

In short, the Gahan administration need only calm and retrofit the city’s streets to rightly lay claim as steward of the only discernible downtown economic development plan in recent memory.

And yet, not only does it obfuscate and delay consideration of Speck's streets study, owing almost surely to the coming election cycle, it also refuses to speak aloud about any of it, seemingly terrified of its own shadow ... or, perhaps, more pathetically, of its own Luddite supporters among locally unreconstructed Dixiecrats.

But there’s even more.

Walkability is a key component of any rational definition of “quality of life,” providing “better access” to all users and enhancing “public safety” in the process.

The ripple effects of any and all measures promoting walkability, as forcefully advocated by Speck (traffic calming, complete streets, two-way traffic and other measures to support increased levels of walking and bicycling) would extend into the neighborhoods nearest the city center. Walkability actively supports other revitalization efforts, not negates them in the fashion of the defeatism inherent in one-way arterial streets.

Walkability is no longer just an ideal. The evidence from a growing body of research shows that walkable neighborhoods not only raise housing prices but reduce crime, improve health, spur creativity, and encourage more civic engagement in our communities.

As an aside, kindly note an instance of supreme irony: In their zeal to defend the Main Street Improvement Project beautification boondoggle, some friends among home owners living on the street have taken to contesting my assertion that they’ve been the prime beneficiaries of selective largesse, in the sense that any street changes benefitting walkability, even those botched as thoroughly as John Rosenbarger’s use of state money to butcher theirs, still will have the effect of raising property values. If not, the “improvement” project is more indefensible than we reckoned, correct?

The opportunity cost of Jeff Gahan’s neglect is irrefutable, and the evidence to support my position is overwhelming.

When cornered periodically into stating a position, Gahan’s team insists it believes the evidence, and intends to implement every last one of Speck’s recommendations – when, and if, the study ever materializes to provide them with requisite political cover.

However, it is precisely this interminable wait for political cover, and damningly, this element of wasted time, that should be at the forefront of each downtown business person’s and surrounding neighborhood resident’s mind, because contrary to the administration’s feeble protests, there most certainly is something it can do in terms of economic development downtown: Remove one-way streets.

At a time when times are tough, can there be any excuse for a doctor waving a prescription before an ill person’s eyes, all the while saying, “I’ve got just what you need to help you feel better, but you can’t have any just yet, and we’d rather not talk about it, so don't ask. Maybe later. Try to stay alive, okay?”

One month ago, David Duggins told me that if City Hall publicly touted the benefits of two-way streets for independent small businesses, the mayor’s team would be blamed for the failure of just one business.

But if City Hall already knows the answer and perpetually procrastinates, then how many businesses has it already caused to die?

Tell us, Mr. Duggins.

How do you defend such abject and purposeful neglect of the “economic development” brief you pretend to carry?

Not to be giggled away like a hung over frat boy over a recuperative Miller Lite longneck, but for attribution?

... Billions of state and local economic incentive dollars seemingly aimed at small businesses flow instead to a few large, well-established, and well-connected businesses. This is yet another example of how the rapidly growing economic-development incentive game remains a perverse and useless waste of taxpayer money ...

... ultimately, the study found that large companies captured between 80 and 96 percent of these small-business incentives, depending on the state in question.

In simple terms, these large companies have become sophisticated at gaming incentive dollars—including those explicitly aimed elsewhere ...

We've been following this story since the original April tort claim (here ... here ... and here, among others).

Whatever your political persuasion, it should be obvious that the lawsuit's timing has been determined according to the election calendar, and just as non-coincidentally, given Padgett & Pals' healthy monetary support of the GOP in the current voting cycle, Republican mayoral candidate Kevin Zurschmiede has made sure the C-J's reporter got this much in writing.

(Zurschmiede) does not consider turning one-way streets into two-way streets to be a top city priority. He wants to add an additional lane in each direction to Interstate 265 to help deal with traffic on the Sherman Minton bridge when the two metro area Ohio River bridges open and start tolling.

So, in his zeal to appease the trucking paymasters, KZ desperately wants us to know that (a) he does not at all understand induced demand, (b) he thinks it is necessary to rely on the state and feds to redesign an interstate on short notice, and (c) enough of that two-way stuff, 'cuz it makes his brain hurt.

If you're a two-way streets advocate, and in terms of casting a vote for mayor, I'm not guilty of hyperbole in suggesting to you that only one choice exists: Me.

But beyond that, a pinch of salt helps the lawsuit make better sense, because this much is true: When it comes to breathtaking duplicity, Jeff Gahan has exercised supreme arrogance and bad faith with two-way streets proponents and Padgett obstructionists alike, in equal measure.

He has lied to us all.

Boondoggles like the Main Street "improvement" project have poisoned potential resolution by making lawsuits like this inevitable, and Gahan's inept evasiveness ever since has made an ugly situation intolerable.

NEW ALBANY — Eight local manufacturers, service companies and trucking companies have filed suit against the city of New Albany, New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan, the Floyd County Commissioners, Indiana Department of Transportation and other government agencies alleging that a recent redesign of East Main Street has negatively affected their right to safely access the street.

According to their counsel, James Gary, these business owners were not consulted prior to the redesign, which has impaired the ability of their vehicles to travel the designated “Heavy Haul” route for New Albany.

Monday, October 26, 2015

ON THE AVENUES EXTRA: Gahan says speeding sucks, but street safety can wait until after he is re-elected.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

There's a lot to say this week, so why not have more than one column?

In the Courier-Journal, reporter Lexy Gross has profiled the incumbent. Let’s skip his numbingly predictable self-hagiography and move straight to the fun parts.

(Jeff) Gahan sees housing and infrastructure problems that still need to be addressed.

We know all too well how Gahan “sees” these problems: Demolish what you can, toss a few kickback bones to Coffey and otherwise ignore all pertinent ordinance enforcement details, all the while insisting that he’s making “fundamental” changes to benefit demographic groups he can’t even spell, much less define coherently.

But it’s Halloween, and the mayor’s “not finished yet,” so pop open an ice-cold Bud Light -- because there’s even more inanity in store.

One issue residents and his opponents have discussed with fervor is whether or not New Albany's street grid should change to accommodate traffic from the untolled Sherman Minton Bridge, once the Ohio River Project bridges are tolled.

Unable to avoid the topic of two-way streets, as he has done regularly for months on end, Gahan instead sent the Fact-O-Meter straight to “TILT,” though at least gifting us with the precise reason why Shirley Baird and Greg Phipps now have taken to subserviently qualifying any stray utterance involving “two-way streets” with a spanking new, hitherto unknown phrase.

“Where feasible.”

Coincidentally, in the spirit of this glittering Orwellian age, I decided to make their logic my own, and after staring at my ballot, it simply proved not feasible for me to cast a vote for either one.

But I digress.

Not coincidentally, there’s a reason why I’ve used the following graphic as often as possible for the past year and a half.

It’s because we knew all along, didn’t we?

Even when the mayor confided in us – even when he looked us in the eye and said he really understood, and he’d be out their battling for two-way streets – we knew it wasn’t going to happen.

Didn’t we?

As he started applying those “TIF and spend and sprawl” suburban solutions to every urban problem, it became even more obvious.

He really didn’t get it, did he?

At best, he'd hide for years, then half-ass two-way streets, probably just after jetting off to run for State Senate, and we'd be better off not changing the streets at all than doing the job so utterly wrong.

Again.

Something about it reminds me of that poor kid with the coke bottle glasses out in right field, standing there solely because the usual starter missed his ride, and with the final out of the game drifting his way in the form of a lazy fly ball that’s a real can of corn, I’m filled with despair and melancholy, because we know those Hollywood endings never happen in real life.

We know he’s not going to catch the ball, and as the runners circle the bases, it’s going to land thirty feet behind him, destined to roll unmolested all the way to the fence, only to be flattened (the baseball, not the fielder) by a passing Tiger Truck on the one-way street beyond.

But there’s a crucial difference.

We actually feel sorry for the kid.

So, Lexy Gross asked Jeff Gahan about two-way streets, and the mayor responded by making vapid excuses, all of which have been contradicted by either documented history or his own team ... at his behest.

The city has 75 years of infrastructure supporting one-way streets, (Gahan) said, from signage to curbs and overhead signals. It's one of many issues he hopes to take a closer look at if re-elected.

Safety as slave to re-election? Say it ain't so, Jeff.

Except we already know it is so -- don't we?

Of course, Main Street had existed as a two-way street since the city’s founding, as had all the rest of the streets, but when Gahan altered Main Street after 200 years to “calm traffic and install medians” (more below), he did so in accordance with beautification principles, not contemporary “complete street” design principles – principles that would have cost far less and made sense in terms of an integrated downtown street grid plan.

Apparently it’s proper to alter a street after two centuries so as to plant flowers and carve house numbers, but not acceptable to revert nearby one-way streets to two ways after a mere 50-odd years (not 75, which would place one-way conversions to the year before Pearl Harbor).

As for signage, only recently Team Gahan’s minions were publicly bragging about their awesome program to inventory all the signage in town, and install gleaming new ones, which in an election year was manifested not by swapping the many faded STOP signs, but by immediately changing as many street signs as possible, better to display the cute new city logo which Team Gahan insists is not a logo – no, it’s just branding emblem/marketing device, albeit it one to be affixed to permanent signs, and one that nonetheless has not yet been approved by a single elected official in any process approximating a vote.

I’m not finished yet. Those overhead signals?

John “Conflict of Interest” Rosenbarger has been assuring folks that (a) recent upgrades on traffic lights have rendered them readily adaptable for use on two-way with little added expense, and (b) we have $2 million or so in federal money waiting on an 80/20 grant to facilitate the two-way reconversion.

Hmm, look over yonder.

Jeff Gahan says he must take a closer look at all this, but curiously, there it already is, on the INDOT letting board for 2017. Someone in city government had to put it there, right? It might even be someone who works for Gahan. Wait – you don’t think it has something to do with the federal money Rosenbarger referenced?

What an unexpectedly profound coincidence, but if it's there, why hasn't Gahan mentioned this fact publicly?

To the reporter when asked?

Of course, the sum total of Gahan’s down-low, prevaricating concerns, as outlined to the C-J reporter, have already been exhaustively answered and minutely explained by Jeff Speck, the nation’s reigning expert on such matters, whose company was hired by Jeff Gahan himself, and paid by the City of New Albany.

Speck’s job was to prepare the conceptual blueprint for these same two-way street plans that Gahan – who signed Speck’s check – now professes to require even more time to ponder than the four years having already elapsed since his first (and Jeeebus willing) only term as mayor, and the two terms as council person before that.

Consequently, had Gahan actually read, grasped and embraced the plan he himself commissioned, he’d already know that his “$2.4 million project … launched last year to calm traffic and install medians on Main Street” was too much money spent on beautifying one street prior to paying the nation’s leading expert to explain how it might have been done correctly … and was not.

Concurrently, anyone who has spent any amount of time using our one-way streets while on foot or riding a bike would stare in open-mouthed amazement at this statement of Gahan’s.

(Gahan) said there probably are too many one-way streets in New Albany, and traffic moves too fast through the city. But “it’s a balance between restricting speed … and not slowing down commerce," he said.

Safety? Shrug. It can wait. Let’s translate this into fervid Gahanese.

Yeah, I suppose speed kills and all that, but hey, we can’t slow down commerce, you know – I mean, that’s why the Scribners built those one-way streets in the first place, because how else could we get those steamboats (it’s a really cool anchor on that non-logo) get up and down Spring Street without Padgett cranes, and … it’s a quality of life issue for our truckers. It's a ripple effect. We're where they ought to be.

To reiterate, all of it has been addressed in Speck’s study, this being the same one the mayor himself commissioned, and the one he apparently saw fit to ignore when making comments to the Courier’s new reporter, regarding readers as rubes who wouldn’t know they were being conned.

If Gahan views it as feasible for humongous trucking vessels of “commerce” to have an intrinsic right to pass through densely populated urban areas at high speeds, even when they’re not the entities contributing to his engorged re-election war chest, then he has abdicated his responsibility for public safety, and he might as well take the final logical step and advocate for the construction of toxic waste dumps adjacent to schools – or, as a friend put it, we can build the schools on top of the toxic waste dumps and save even more space.

Sounds Gahan-feasible, so long as the toxic waste dump operators tithe according to prevailing contract versus campaign financing guidelines.

Several of Steve Resch's buildings-in-progress have served as temporary venues for art. This is the most recent, at the former pawn shop on Market (across from Comfy Cow).

It's Wednesday night only, so plan accordingly.

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BALLOONACY: Lost in InflationIndiana University Southeast's Fine Arts Program is hosting an art installation in downtown New Albany. 'The Pawn Shop', as we endearingly call it, is our chosen venue for our Social Sculpture class, which encourages the act of creating artwork within the community. This collaboration is our way of breathing new life and repurposing this historic building so that we may invite the public to be immersed in an interactive space. The installation will include over 1000 balloons to fill the space and handmade 16 mm video will be projected on top of the balloons, allowing the viewer to move within the artwork. Joy Luck will provide refreshments. BALLOONACY: Lost in Inflation will take place on Wednesday, October 28th at 110 Market Street, New Albany, Indiana. This is a ONE NIGHT EVENT open from 7:00 – 9:00 pm.Visit our Facebook page to see other work from our artists.ARTISTSAmelia WiseMichael KoppPaul RobeyC.J. Bowyer Aliccia KasperLiz WalkerAngie HowardBethany BartonCody PresleyFurther Info:Brian Harper, Associate Professor of Fine Art, IU SoutheastEmail: harperba@ius.edu

Sunday, October 25, 2015

The Meet the Candidate Show on WNAS-TV is airing at 10:00 a.m., 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. The mayoral candidates lead it off, with Kevin Zurschmiede first, followed by Jeff Gahan and then The Pirate (me). As noted earlier today, my segment runs a wee bit long.

Can I help it if I have a lot to say?

The WNAS station manager may wish to turn off his cell phone before retiring, as the mayor has a nasty habit of intemperate late-night berating. Thus far, you must tune in to watch, but we're doing what we can to snag a copy.

Remember that "WNAS Radio and TV will again have live Election Night coverage on November 3 at 6:30."

I'm taking great care to record screenshots, given that every past action suggest there'll be an orgy of deletions later this morning.

The topic to which the chairman of the Board of Public Works and Safety speaks (below), as joined subsequently by the usual sycophants' chorus, is my "Meet the Candidates" segment on WNAS-TV.

My recollection is a suggestion that it be kept to 5 - 8 minutes, but there was no hard and fast rule. I did not rehearse, but read my outline aloud, and it came to about 8 minutes. When finished in the studio, it was remarked that my presentation was a bit lengthy, and if there were any problems, I'd be informed.

I haven't even viewed it yet, but evidently the relevant guidelines were met, seeing as the segment is being aired. I'll get a copy as soon as I can, and share it -- because sharing, not suppressing, is my preferred mode of modernity.

Perhaps it isn't the length of the segment that is of most concern to Team Gahan's resident censors, but the content.

Perhaps they might divert a portion of the incumbent's $180,000 nest egg to purchase mirrors, which are said to assist in the process of self-examination.

However, their record of shamelessness "suggests" this suggestion won't be followed. Are they finished yet? We'll see in nine days.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

A slideshow version of the campaign finance disclosure of the Committee to Elect Gahan, Abigail Gardner, Treasurer. This CFA-4 form was filed on October 16, 2015 on behalf of Jeff Gahan's run to be elected mayor of New Albany, Indiana.

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How will we know that downtown revitalization is succeeding?

Downtown businessmen don't have to be told that racism is unacceptable.

Downtown coffee shops have enough business to be open evenings and weekends.